Editorial on community violence: Searching for answers

Deadly signals: The recent violent incidents on the Peninsula make us shudder

May 28, 2013

Crime happens. Gun violence happens. Homicides happen. They happen everywhere, and they happen so often that on a certain level it is easy to get numbed by the sheer volume. (That number, by the way, would be more than 30,000 – that's the number of gun deaths in the U.S. in 2010 by homicide, suicide and accidental shooting.)

And then there are the moments where one or two incidents break through the haze of statistics and hit home on a gut level. We had a couple of those moments over this holiday weekend on the Peninsula. On Saturday, a 16-year-old boy was killed and four other teens were injured when two suspects – ages 17 and 15 – opened fire into a group during an argument near the Hampton Coliseum Spring Carnival. Then, on Monday night, a 13-year-old was killed and a 17-year-old seriously injured in a shooting outside a Newport News convenience store.

Kids getting killed. Kids doing the killing. It hurts.

There have now been 17 homicides in Newport News and Hampton this year, including child abuse victims who were 6 months old and 4 years old. Of the other 15 homicide victims, three have been teens. Eight of the arrested suspects have been teens. Police do not yet know who shot and killed the 13-year-old, but all too often when a teen is shot, it is another teen who pulled the trigger.

Our first instinct is to demand a solution.

Our second instinct is to throw up our hands and say there is no solution.

Any short-term approach that would actually work is one that offends our sensibilities as civil libertarians. If we agreed to implement martial law – outlaw guns, increase the presence of security cameras, frisk citizens based on relentless profiling – we would see a reduction in violent crime. But would it be worth the cost of our most basic freedoms?

The long-term solutions are more reasonable, but they are also more abstract. In fact, they are very nearly impossible to enact, because they depend not on laws and enforcement, but on fundamental changes in behavior at every level of our culture. In short, they would depend on individual responsibility – on a widespread basis over the period of many years.

How can we gradually but effectively reduce violent crime over the next 10 or 20 years? There are programs that certainly help. The Achievable Dream has produced great results, but it can only accommodate so many at-risk students. There is no organization more admirable in its goals than Big Brothers and Big Sisters. But to use a combat metaphor – because it does feel like we're in a battle here – these programs are like the field medics who patch up the wounded, when what we really need is someone who can end the war.

So what would work? The simplest answer is that the solution will include breaking a cycle that has served to perpetuate poverty and crime for too many generations now. It involves the continued breakdown of what we used to call the basic nuclear family unit: two parents, ideally married to each other, raising children together. For too long now, young men have been making and then abandoning babies with young women who aren't prepared – emotionally, financially or in any other way – to raise children. Those babies grow up without the necessary parental support, and they continue the cycle by making babies of their own.

It's hard to imagine putting a dent in urban crime statistics until we can at least slow that cycle down a bit. But that's not a task for the police or the city council. It's a task for families and neighbors and churches and teachers. And for those people to do their jobs, they need to have the respect of the children they are trying to help. Does that respect still exist? A few generations ago, children used to fear what would happen if they misbehaved on the street and a neighbor reported it to their parents. Today, in many areas, the neighbors fear what would happen to them if they place that call.

When we can't send our kids to a carnvial without the fear of gun violence, when 13-year-olds are shot down outside a convenience store, anyone can see that we have a problem. But can we find a solution? We're open to suggestions.